This article considers the culture of learning communities for effective teaching. A learning community is defined here as an environment where learners are brought together to share information, to learn from each other, and to create new knowledge. The individual student develops her/his own learning by building on learning from others. In a learning community approach to teaching, educators can ensure that students gain workplace skills such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. In this case study, it is shown how an active learning community, introduced into a blended teaching environment (face-to-face and virtual), effectively supported international undergraduates in the building of knowledge and workplace skills.
Tag: effective teaching
Coming Home to School: Challenges and Strategies for Effective Teaching with Military Veterans
This article is an analysis of the unique needs of returning service members at the college or university level that impact the teaching decisions made by instructors. The article also discusses the challenges that service members are individually addressing while acclimating themselves to their new environment of learning. With the reduction in forces occurring after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, many higher level learning institutions are struggling to adequately meet the needs of returning veterans. In turn, veterans often find that the style of instruction and the general college-level universe are difficult to negotiate. The combination of these factors can often result in veteran students performing below expectation or leaving school without finishing. The article proposes a variety of ways to understand and address these challenges including the use of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) strategies and characteristics.
Constraints on Innovative Teaching in British Universities: An American Perspective
Effective teaching is often difficult to achieve because institutional frameworks and inertia – unique to the British educational system – inhibit teachers from being innovative. These challenges to more innovative teaching are the relatively short length of time to a degree, and the heavy institutional oversight of degree programs and individual courses. Also, the tradition of lack of regular feedback and failures in the supervision and marking of undergraduate dissertations also lead to a less-than-ideal educational experience. Fortunately, some of these challenges can be overcome and provide a better learning experience for students.